Book Review: Night Boat to Tangier

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry

This dark and brooding novel should allow Barry to take his rightful place in the pantheon of great Irish writers such as Samuel Beckett and Brendan Behan.

From Beckett's legacy, you find echoes of Waiting for Godot. Two old men, past their sell date and with few willing to listen to them, bicker and pontificate on life as they await for one of their daughters to arrive from or depart to Tangier. Behan's style is seen as you ride with the ebb and flow of the story and fearing the worst, despite having little idea where it's going.

But Barry, improving the journey with every page you turn, compels you to forge ahead.

Night Boat is a tale about Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, two old Irish drug dealers, wanderers, and petty criminals, who have made it good, then lost most of it. They are in a Spanish port, waiting for Maurice's daughter, Dilly -- or Dill, neither is really sure. They haven't seen in her a while, and all they can say about her is, "She's a small girl. She's a pretty girl."

As they wait, they talk and bicker about politics and philosophy. Many of the conversations between  the two sometimes partners and other times adversaries provide an opportunities to tell their history, and the novel devolves into another time and place for the tales.

Barry's writing is ravishingly beautiful, and he is at the top of his craft. He makes every word count, never squeezing in a phrase that doesn't belong.

You must you use your five senses to take it all in.

You can hear the silent responses of the bored Spanish clerk at the information center. You can feel the gray and dense mists as the city falls into a drugged slumber. You can taste the stale cigarettes smoked and the bitter coffee drank.You can see the hard pure light of Oct. 23, as night gives way to morning again. You can smell the dank of the empty yet cramped terminal. You can even imagine Charlie Redmond drinking in a pub, alone but for his demons.

Or you can see, feel, and hear Maurice Hearne walking with his aged mother, whose sighs opened pockets of woe.

He's one of the best writers Ireland has offered up in a long time.